Flexible polyelectrolyte hybrid dielectrics for multilevel nonvolatile low-voltage organic transistor memories

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) are promising candidates for advanced memory devices, but it is challenging to realize flexible OFET memories with low-voltage operation and multistage storage characteristics. Here, a novel kind of flexible polyelectrolyte hybrid films doped with zinc chloride (ZnCl₂) is developed for achieving multilevel nonvolatile low-voltage OFET memories. The ZnCl₂-doped polyelectrolyte hybrid film as a new dielectric layer enables flexible OFET memories at a low-operating voltage of −1.5 V to afford a wide memory window of 0.548 V, covering 36.5% of the scanning range. The ability to regulate ion migration in the doped dielectric by controlling gate voltages has endowed the OFET memories with excellent memory storage performance. These low-voltage OFET memories can be effectively written by programming gate pulses, and erased with the use of reverse gate pulses and ultraviolet light irradiation. The OFET memory devices can be further integrated as a flexible memory array to achieve electrical imaging. Further utilizing an average current output circuit to smooth the imaging picture enables the improved edge clarity and preserves key information while reducing storage space of the initial character bitmap image. These findings show the good potential of novel polyelectrolyte hybrid dielectrics and their low-power OFET memories in information sensing, storage and computation.